CYCLE SEVEN

1. Clearly the simple distinction so long bandied-about by philosophers between 'free will' and 'natural determinism' is, if taken literally, more a reflection of gender contrast than a simple dichotomy between one choice and another, since free will, like free spirit, is an aspect of free nature and therefore contrasts, from a female standpoint, with the natural determinism of that nature which, being male, owes the undermining and even transmutation of will and spirit into mind and subspirit to a free psyche in which ego and soul are the prevalent factors.

2. Where free will as an aspect of free nature exists, on the other hand, it is because Nature takes precedence over Psyche and the latter is accordingly transmuted by a prevalent will and spirit into id and superego, thereby manifesting what has been termed psychic determinism to the detriment of any free psyche that may, especially with regard to males, be about to fall into its outflanking disposition.

3. Therefore either free nature conditioning psychic determinism prevails as a sensual reality or, by sensible contrast, free psyche conditioning natural determinism prevails, as it does whenever males opt for salvation from the folly of natural freedom or, more correctly, psychic determinism to the wisdom of psychic freedom and its corollary ... of natural determinism, and damn females, in consequence, to the goodness of punishing crime, which rather contrasts with the evil of criminal punishment, and no less than the wisdom of graceful sin contrasts, in male sensibility, with the folly of sinful grace, the sort of psyche that plays second-fiddle, as it were, to a sinful nature in which, contrary to male interests, freedom has the better of determinism.

4. Since life is a gender tug-of-war between incompatible antagonists, the one objective and favouring clearness over unclearness, cultural and/or civilized evil in sensuality over racial and/or generative good in sensibility, and the other subjective and favouring holiness over unholiness, civilized and/or cultural wisdom in sensibility over generative and/or racial folly in sensuality, it stands to reason that neither sex can have or ever has had it entirely all its own way, nor would that be desirable even if it were possible, in view of the human condition, or the way in which people are structured as compromises, to greater or lesser extents, between sensuality and sensibility.

5. But even if gender remains pretty constant and therefore consistently divisible between female and male interests and predilections, it could be said that the ratio of sensuality to sensibility, or vice versa, is subject to fluctuation and modification on the basis of the ratio of Nature to Civilization, in the environmental sense, and that the degree to which sensual or sensible criteria obtain at the expense of their opposites is therefore not fixed but extensively, if not intensively, and almost infinitely transmutable.

6. For instance, one can argue for Man, meaning mankind in the broadest possible sense, including those who, strictly speaking, might be more devilish or godly than feminine or masculine, as creatures of Nature to the extent that natural conditions predominate and sensuality is accordingly more prevalent than sensibility, but this would limit one to either certain categories of Man, say primitives or rural-dwellers, or to a certain basic level or even absence of Civilization in which Nature was both extensively and intensively present, and to such an extent that freedom rather than binding, Heathen rather than Christian criteria were everywhere chiefly characteristic of the people(s) concerned.

7. On the other hand, one can argue for Man, again in the broadest and most comprehensive sense, as creatures of Civilization to the extent that urban conditions predominate and sensibility is accordingly more prevalent than sensuality, and again this would limit one to either certain categories of Man, say urban-dwellers and modern sophisticates, or to a certain advanced level and presence of Civilization in which Nature was only very sparsely or thinly present, and people were accordingly more disposed to binding than to freedom, with a correspondingly enhanced sense of religious values.

8. For I have argued elsewhere that the dichotomy between Nature and Civilization, rural and urban environments, boils down to a distinction between the 'without' and the 'within', sensuality and sensibility, and that the more Civilization develops at Nature's expense, as it does in fact tend to do, the less sensuality will there be and the more disposed to sensibility in indoor lifestyles do people become, with a corollary that Christian-type criteria tend to prevail over any demonstrably heathenistic or paganistic, or overly sensual criteria.

9. Thus as we have the power, the freedom and the ability to change our environments, so do we change in proportion to the transposition from outdoors to indoors, from rural to urban, from backwards to forwards, from primitivity to modernity, from jungle to city. Therefore while we cannot categorically maintain that Man is this or that, natural or civilized, we can argue in favour of his transmutation from Nature to Civilization and for a view of Man in relation to the latter which permits us to identify Him with artificial criteria and for enhanced sensibility in proportion to the degree of his Civilization.

10. Therefore the civilized view of Man will fly in the face of Man as a creature of Nature and render everything said about the latter that smacks of sensual fatalism or fixation to be merely provisional and contingent upon certain circumstances, circumstances which Modern Man, as a creature of Civilization, has largely turned his back on, in the pursuit of ever-higher and deeper ends.

11. For sensibility is not handed to us on a plate by sensuality, any more than urban civilization is handed to us by a rural environment that, by its very sensual nature, understands little or nothing of the city and would be unwilling and unable, in any case, to envision the development of the latter. Every gain made by Civilization, by sensibility, is done at Nature's expense, and it is with this process of ongoing urbanization that not only do we become more sensible, but that the tables are turned, as it were, on the sorts of freedoms that give females undue advantage over males, and thus make possible to both males and females alike a greater degree of binding, whether directly to self, as with males, or indirectly to self through enhanced constraints upon not-self freedom of action, as with females.

12. Only thus can we advance towards the 'celestial city' of 'Kingdom Come', in which the male psyche, being truly free, is free to prevail over natural determinism to an extent which brings even the free nature of females into disrepute, and causes them to defer to the graceful sin of wisdom from the punishing criminality of their goodness, whether on absolute or relative terms, depending on the elemental context.